Chapter 10
The first thing he did was threaten to kill me. Then he realized I was a woman.
“How’s the new hire?” his father asked at dinner the next day.
West sat down at the table that had been set up in his parents’ small living room. There was a strange array of food spread out on the table: macaroni and cheese and chicken tenders, a salad that probably only West would eat.
“She’s doing good.”
“She’s one of the Wilders,” his mother said, making deliberate eye contact for just a little too long.
“Yes, she is.”
Her gaze slid away and moved to the bowl of macaroni and cheese. His dad started to serve her a portion.
They did complete each other. In many ways.
There were just certain things neither of them could manage very well.
Or didn’t want to. He supposed it didn’t matter which.
“It’s funny that the Hancocks have never had anything to do with that family since Butch rode off, and now we do. I wonder if it’s a pattern. A certain number of years.”
His mother really liked patterns.
“I don’t think it’s a pattern so much as Jessie falling in love with Flynn.”
“Maybe. But maybe the pattern is a part of it,” his mother pointed out.
“Cassidy’s going to be ready in time for the Christmas show?” his dad asked.
“Yeah. I think she will be.”
He was doing his best not to think about earlier. About the way he had lost control.
But when she had said she was going away with Dalton, he had been incensed. He knew he shouldn’t let it get to him. Hell, what was the point? There wasn’t a damn thing he could do with her, so he had already decided he was going to let Dalton have her.
Better in theory than in practice.
He hadn’t been able to let her go without tasting her first.
And it had been worth it. Explosive.
He hadn’t expected a single kiss to turn into her having an orgasm against the barn wall, but he had been right.
The chemistry was on another planet.
And it was potentially dangerous to them both.
“Well, if she doesn’t work out, then Jessie Jane can just take her job back.”
“Jessie Jane is the mayor of this town. I don’t think she’s going to come back to the Wild West Show.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he was about done too. He had avoided having that conversation with his parents. Because, of course, the possibility that he might leave hadn’t occurred to them. Not when he’d bought the ranch, not when he’d started building his house. Not ever.
“She loves the Wild West Show.”
“Yes,” West said, speaking for himself too. “She does. I also think she can’t make it her whole life.”
“I made it mine,” his dad said.
“I know, Dad.” There wasn’t much point in reminding William he’d never been mayor of Rustler Mountain.
“Now, what we need to do is get working on a new show. Because we can’t center everything around Jessie Jane anymore.”
“Dad …”
“We need to have something new for next year.”
West could only stare at his father for a second. “Dad, next year, I’m going to have the ranch up and running, and I’m not going to have any extra time for the show.”
“Of course you will. You’re not going to quit working the Wild West Show. That’s impossible. It’s our family legacy.”
West stared at him, his next words forming a knot at the base of his throat that he couldn’t quite manage to speak around.
How did his dad not realize? That this was not his legacy.
It never had been. Neither he nor Jessie Jane had ever wanted to make the Wild West Show their entire identity.
His dad had backed this horse, this connection to the past, their family name, and everything terrible that it stood for, years ago, and he had made it everything he was, but he hadn’t noticed that it wasn’t the same for his kids.
And West just didn’t know how to … how to make him see. He had moved away. He had bought property somewhere else. He had fully stated his intention of making something new out of his life. But his dad just didn’t seem to get it.
If his father were a terrible person, then maybe West wouldn’t have any qualms about yelling at him. Telling him that things had to change. Telling him that he needed to get his head out of his ass. But his dad was a good man. This was the problem.
He loved his dad. His difficulties, his stubbornness. His pride.
He admired him. He had learned how to be a man from his dad, however imperfect he might be.
His parents hadn’t left him on a mountain the way Cassidy’s had.
They did their best. But still, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was sitting with a different set of parents, in a more functional family, if maybe they would ask him what he wanted. What his goals were. How everything was coming along at the ranch. Maybe, just maybe. But they didn’t.
His dad started to go on about his plans for the future of the show.
His mom ate in silence. West thought he was going to crawl out of his skin.
When he was little, he would have. He would’ve jumped up, made a ruckus, run around the room.
He might’ve jumped out a window and gone streaking up the side of the mountain.
Anything to get a reaction, to feel something.
His wildness never got a reaction.
There was something both good and bad about that. His parents had never told him that the devil was trying to deceive him, tempt him, destroy him because of the way his brain worked. They had accepted that he was part hellion.
But their non-reaction made him feel rudderless. Maybe there was a part of acceptance that could never fully be realized when half of it came from not being seen at all.
He felt like a whiny teenager. He was getting irritated with himself when his mother looked up at him.
“I think it would be a good idea for me to send some of the diaries home with you.”
He frowned. “What diaries?”
“Mine. From the family collection.”
Reams of family history were some of the many things his mother had stacked from floor to ceiling in her trailer. “But Mom, you want those for yourself. It’s important to you to have them.”
“Yes. It is. But I always knew that some of them needed to go to you. Just like some of them needed to go to Jessie.”
This was always the way with his parents. He would get angry. And then they would challenge his assumptions. About himself, about them.
His mother had clearly been thinking about this for a while.
“It would be good for you. To read about the family.”
“I guess.”
He wasn’t a big reader. He never had been. Then he remembered what he and Cassidy had spoken about recently. That it might be nice if somebody wrote the history of Butch Hancock. Well, it would never be him. He would probably barely get through reading about it.
“That’s nice, Mom. I … I’ll take really good care of the papers.”
“I know you will.”
That knot in his throat began to diffuse.
Just when he had been thinking they didn’t know him at all, his mom said something like that. Nobody else seemed to know him so well. Seemed to know that he cared. That he wouldn’t treat lightly a gift of family lore. Most townspeople saw him as careless, but not his parents.
People saw them that way. Hell, he did. Sometimes.
It wasn’t fair.
“Do you want to walk over with me to get them?”
“Yeah,” he said, shoveling the rest of his dinner into his mouth.
He stood up and followed his mom out of the mobile home that she lived in, slept in, ate in, cooked in, with William.
She kept all of her things, her special things, in her other trailer. The one where she spent her alone time. The things in it were sacred to her, and no one else was allowed to touch them. The living arrangement was unconventional, like so many things his parents did, but it worked for them.
Her private space was only a few steps away from the main trailer, and he followed her down the little rock path, up the front steps.
She had painted rocks out front, and wind chimes hung everywhere on the front porch.
Stepping inside was like entering an unconventional museum. There were books, crystals, and the artifacts of his mother’s life.
“Thank you for this,” he said.
She looked at him as if he confused her. “Of course.”
“I didn’t think you supported my buying the ranch.”
She frowned. “Of course I do, but you never talk about it.”
“You and Dad never ask about it.”
“Do you need us to?”
It was a very sincerely asked question.
“Usually, if someone doesn’t ask about something, it means they aren’t interested.”
“Well, how do I know if you’re interested in talking about something if you never bring it up?”
“I don’t know, Mom. That’s a good point. I’ve been kind of hesitant to talk about it because I worry Dad can’t accept that I’m not going to be involved with the show.”
She frowned. “I can’t accept it either. It’s going to be so different.” She clasped her hands together in front of herself and began to twist them back and forth. “I can’t imagine the show working without you and Jessie Jane.”
“It’s going to have to work differently. That’s all.”
“Are you angry at your dad?”
“No. I’m not angry at him. It’s just … it’s time for me to do something different. I don’t want to be a performer. That’s not who I am. It’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
“You just want to be a rancher?”
“Yes. I mean, you know I trade on the stock market, and I’m still going to do that. But that’s just me. It’s … kind of a hobby. You know, one that makes more money than any job I’ve ever had.”
“Making money isn’t the most important thing.”
“I know.”
“Does the idea of having a ranch make you happy?”
“The idea of having something that’s mine makes me happy. Something that I built. The idea of making our family name mean more than it has … That’s important to me.”
“You have that adventurous spirit. Your dad does too. I just want to be safe. To have things stay the same. Your dad has done that for me. For all these years. He’s a really good man.”
“I know he is.”
“Sometimes, it seems as if you don’t think so. Because you don’t want to be like him.”
“That’s not what this is about. It’s not about wanting to be like Dad or not be like Dad. It’s about …”
“Yes?”